Life Is What You Make It

Your life is yours to create. Be grateful for the opportunity. Seize it with passion and boldness. Whatever you decide to do, commit to it with all your strength … and begin it now.

What are you waiting for?

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now

all of us should be proud of our lives, because making a life is the one profound and sacred opportunity shared by every person ever born. Life is what we make it. No one else can do it for us; no one has the right to tell us what it ought to be.

We make our own goals. We define our own successes. We don’t get to choose where we start in life; we do get to choose the kind of people we become

Life is what we make it, and part of succeeding lies in breaking through to a clear understanding of what our own success should look like. No one else can tell us how to measure or describe it. No one else can judge whether we’ve reached our goals or fallen short.

The world can throw rewards at us, or can withhold them. That’s the world’s business. But the world can’t judge the fundamental value and legitimacy of what we are trying to achieve. That’s our business. The success we define for ourselves is the treasure that cannot be tarnished or taken away

True success is something we earn privately and whose value we determine for ourselves.

The outside world can reward us with money, but it cannot anoint us with this deeper and more personal kind of success.

On the other hand, neither can the outside world take away the success that we’ve earned in our inmost hearts. And this has enormous implications of a very practical kind

money should be seen as a spin-off of success, a side effect, and not the measure of success itself

There’s a subtle distinction, I believe, between being capable of doing something and being truly prepared to do it

Too many people chasing the same thing in the same place seemed to lead, inevitably, to muddled reasoning and a herd mentality

when we do make mistakes but refuse to admit them, out of stubbornness or insecurity or inattention, we miss the chance to bounce off the error and head in some better direction.

We miss the chance to become better at being who we are.

Since it’s part of human nature to imagine we’ve been smart when in fact we’ve just been fortunate, I allowed myself the vanity of thinking, Hmm, maybe I have a feel for this real estate stuff …